2018 Hobsbawm Memorial Lecture - Luther, Death and Anti-Popery
In 1546, as Luther lay dying, he made one last attack on the Pope: ‘Living I was your plague, Dead I will be your death, O Pope!’

In this special, illustrated lecture, Professor Lyndal Roper explores anti-papalism and anti-monasticism in Lutheran art. These images were so extreme that they cannot be considered propagandistic: they would hardly have converted adherents of the old church. They were not meant literally, and they are full of riotous invention as well as bitter attack. Why were such images produced; and what can they tell us about Lutheran visual culture? More broadly, how can historians contribute to the study of visual culture?

Lyndal Roper is a Fellow and Regius Professor of History at Oriel College, University of Oxford. She is the author of Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet, a New Statesman, Spectator, History Today, Guardian and Sunday Times Book of the Year.
Date: 16 May 2018, 18:00 (Wednesday, 4th week, Trinity 2018)
Venue: Beveridge Hall, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
Speaker: Lyndal Roper (Fellow and Regius Professor of History at Oriel College)
Booking required?: Required
Booking url: http://www.history.ac.uk/events/event/15836
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Laura Spence